The prospect of a third member of the Bush family being nominated to run for president doesn’t exactly light up the excitement meter, but say this about Jeb Bush: He’s been around long enough that he apparently doesn’t feel the need to pander on every issue dear to the party base.
The latest example: Bush still refuses to sign the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” the Grover Norquist-engineered document whose origins go back to 1986 and which almost all GOP candidates have signed over the years as a matter of course. By signing the pledge, candidates vow to oppose any changes in taxation that result in a net tax increase.
But Bush hasn’t signed the pledge and clearly won’t, if a recent exchange between the former Florida governor and National Review Editor Rich Lowry is any indication. , Lowry asked Bush, “Is there any circumstance in which you would take that pledge?”
“No,” Bush flatly replied, adding that his record on taxes “is as good or better than any.”
It’s not that we believe America’s long-term fiscal health must involve major tax hikes, or that social problems, including income inequality, demand that Congress enact soak-the-rich solutions.
In fact, fiscal conservatives are quite correct that entitlement spending must be reformed for the U.S. to avoid a debt crisis in the coming decades.
But ruling out tax increases is still a major mistake, for at least two reasons.
First, earmarked taxes such as the gasoline tax can erode in value over time, leaving core functions of government patently underfunded.
Second, achieving structural reform in a divided government usually requires compromise — and thus perhaps additional revenues.
For example, would Republicans really reject a deal to reform Social Security by slowing the long-term inflation-adjusted growth of benefits in return for a modest boost in the earnings cap?
If so, they would be immensely short-sighted.
Jeb Bush has even been lashed by anti-tax die-hards for telling the House Budget Committee in 2012 that he’d accept $1 in tax increases for $10 in spending cuts. Their theory seems to be that fiscal hawks will always be outfoxed by big spenders who, like Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown, will find a way to renege on spending cuts. But why should that always be the case?
A budget and tax-reform package that contained $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in higher taxes would be a huge victory for fiscal conservatives. And Bush shouldn’t have to backtrack for having stated the obvious.
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